No Justice, No Clicks —

French media to Google: pay us for news searches

Search giant tells government it would rather cut off French media sites.

The French seem to have an appetite for regulating the Internet, and for going after Google in particular. A new proposed law would force Google to make payments when French media show up in news searches; but Google has responded, in a letter to French ministers, that it "cannot accept" such a solution and would simply remove French media sites from its searches.

The result? "Less information would be available online," writes Google.

Google France posted the whole letter online last night after excerpts of it began appearing in the press. The letter lays out Google's views on the good things that search does for media sites, like bringing four billion additional clicks per month to those properties. The letter also notes that the UK paper The Times opted back in to Google search after realizing it couldn't live without the traffic; 30 to 40 percent of it was coming from search.

The French government and culture agencies seem open to the publishers' proposal, however. Agence France-Presse quotes French Culture Minister Aurelie Filippetti as calling the proposed law "a tool that it seems important to me to develop."

She also said she was surprised by the tone of Google's letter: "You don't deal with a democratically-elected government with threats."

A French media association called Google's missive a "complete refusal by the dominant actor on the market ... of all dialogue."

Google already has a licensing deal with Agence France-Presse, the French newswire. That deal was struck in 2007, after AFP filed a lawsuit saying Google's use of snippets violated copyright.

Joe Mullin / Joe has covered the intersection of law and technology, including the world's biggest copyright and patent battles, since 2007.

"You don't deal with a democratically-elected government with threats."

...Says the government that seems to feel pretty good about threatening Google. I think Google's response was just fine, really. You can't tell them they have to pay to give you hits and then moan when they decide to not give you hits.

Lemme break it down to you Google, You pay me to bring me 4 billion clicks a month. And in return you get the privilege of bringing me 4 billion clicks and whatever money I charge you. Sound fair?

Why is the french govt surprised by Google's response. Google gets nothing out of it. Its a tax for allowing Google to basically advertise these sites. Something they have been doing for free for years now.

Wait no, a tax goes to the govt., this is extorsion. "Pay these private media sites and get nothing in return."

She also said she was surprised by the tone of Google's letter: "You don't deal with a democratically-elected government with threats."

And a French media association called Google's missive a "complete refusal by the dominant actor on the market ... of all dialogue."

I'm not sure what she thinks the government can do here. They can't force Google to carry French sources in their news aggregation, as that's not something a "democratically-elected government" does. So if they want to go ahead with the idea of forcing Google to pay a fee to include French sources, then Google should be entirely within their rights to tell them to shove it and exclude those sources.

Ironic, considering the whole SEO thing. On the one side, companies bend over backward to be on the search, and then on the other you have groups like this who apparently think it's a privilege for google to provide search results. Are we to have some sort of reverse-SEO market, where search engines bid on content to share?

I don't see the threat...Google is declining to pay, and will simply leave the sites out of their searches.

In the Internet age, not having your news clips searchable on the world's leading search engine is tantamount to being dead and buried. Why would anyone even seek you out when the major news agencies show up in the first several tiers of a Google search? Either learn to advertise in the Internet age, or die. News agencies live and die by popularity and exposure. This move reduces exposure by a significant amount.

Didn't this happened before? If my memory still works I remember a French News site suing Google for linking their news feeds, forcing Google to remove it from their search engine and then when their (French news site) user views ground to a halt they sued Google to continue using links to their site.

"A French media association called Google's missive a "complete refusal by the dominant actor on the market ... of all dialogue.""Really? I thought the dominant actor of the market was the French government that you're bribing to force search engines to pay you for sending ad revenue generating traffic your way, douchebags. If anything, it should be Google getting paid for doing them a service and sending traffic their way.

Government Official 3: "I know! Let's charge Google for the privilege of linking to content here in France!"

Government Official 1: "BRILLIANT!!!"

</sarcasm>

I don't know how France could honestly believe that they have the power to tell a global private company that is available for free to everyone, that they should pay the government for every link to their information. If I was Google, my response would probably be the same thing (except not worded as nicely, I do love my four-letter words.)

I don't see the threat...Google is declining to pay, and will simply leave the sites out of their searches.

The very fact that French see it (Google's omissions of French news websites) as a threat tells you that they know the importance of Google aggregating news stories. However, they want their cake and eat it too, hence "include us in the search and pay us" mantra. If that is what they want, then the French universal health care must provide "memory" pills to all French citizens, because remembering the URIs of so many websites is going to be a biotch.

I like Google's response to a wacky proposed French law. The French dont' have a clue. Let France create its own in-country Intranet and regulate the hell out of it. That would put them on par with Iran.

I don't see the threat...Google is declining to pay, and will simply leave the sites out of their searches.

In the Internet age, not having your news clips searchable on the world's leading search engine is tantamount to being dead and buried. Why would anyone even seek you out when the major news agencies show up in the first several tiers of a Google search? Either learn to advertise in the Internet age, or die. News agencies live and die by popularity and exposure. This move reduces exposure by a significant amount.

Not sure if this comment is for or against. Google provides free indexing. They don't make money indexing the internet for newspapers, so why should they pay them to do it? Google makes money by advertising to me, which they can do because they provide the best results when I'm looking for something. This makes me the customer, not the publication.

Publications on the other hand get free exposure and an opportunity to have someone looking for info on a topic find an article from them (even if the user had no idea the publication even existed). When I read your article (on your website) is the publications opportunity to sell adverts, etc, to make money themselves.

Any French citizen or organization that doesn't want their content indexed by Google is free to use robots.txt. They can even exclude other search engines, not just Google.

Oh wait. Being excluded isn't what they want. They want Google to pay them for including them in Google's index.

I don't consider what Google said to be a threat. It's just good business. Save money. Google has no obligation to index anything belonging to anyone. We have SEO people tripping over each other to be included in Google's index. If you are included in Google's index be glad of it. Don't expect to be paid for the privilege of being indexed by the world's best search engine.

Not sure if this comment is for or against. Google provides free indexing. They don't make money indexing the internet for newspapers, so why should they pay them to do it? Google makes money by advertising to me, which they can do because they provide the best results when I'm looking for something. This makes me the customer, not the publication.

This is something of a nit, but I think it's an important one.

You, as a user of google.com, are absolutely not Google's customer. Only people who pay Google are their customers. This isn't to say you aren't valuable to Google; you're their product. They want to keep you happy to whatever extent they can spend less to get your eyeballs than they make by selling them.

Your relationship (again, as a user of google.com) with Google is far more akin to your relationship with ABC than it is your relationship with Microsoft or Apple.

-->She also said she was surprised by the tone of Google's letter: "You don't deal with a democratically-elected government with threats."<--

No, what you don't do is threaten to charge a benefactor for providing you with a large volume of your business. You don't threaten to charge a supplier who gives you - free of charge - the means to distribute your news and generate traffic. It's not a threat - it's an offer to retract the free service being provided.

More evidence that the French still don't understand the internet. France is not an island, and if Google and the other search engines stop linking to France based news sites, other will gladly pick up the slack.

There are plenty of French news from Switzerland, Belgium, Canada and Africa. Most will not mind having a snippet of their news on Google news in exchange for increased traffic.

And what's to stop British or Americans for example to publish news directed towards the French?

All aboard the John Galt Express. Now Departing France and heading for locations such as Mountain Ville California and Kansas City, MO. Your conductor on this trip will be Google and the menu will not be served in French this evening. That is all, thank you for riding John Galt Express.

The level of entitlement presumed by the French media/gov't is just staggering. First for presuming that they're doing Google a favor by being listed (and that they should be compensated for it), and second for acting astonished that Google would be uninterested in negotiating with them.

I like Google's response to a wacky proposed French law. The French dont' have a clue. Let France create its own in-country Intranet and regulate the hell out of it. That would put them on par with Iran.

The french did have their own intranet, they took it offline just this year.. or was that last year? Ars had an article on that. I think it was called minitel or something like that.

If I were Google I'd stop talking about it and just make the indexing of all French news sites on Google News (or Google itself if they object to that little text appearing) opt-in with a contract giving Google a free license to aggregate the content and a clause that in case of compulsory licensing the contract will be considered null and so will the indexing. A little complicated but very much in direct agreement with proposed law and pisses off a large portion of the voting public.

And once I had it coded I would start rolling it out to every country where such legislation is proposed. Obviously if they're lobbying to get these laws they must desire their privacy so opt-in for them too. I'd just explain it as necessary to comply with "prevailing government and business sentiment" in the country. I just kinda like the idea of turning it from a threat to "new best practices in your region."